Marcella

By: Mrs. Humphry Ward (1851-1920)

Mary Augusta Ward was a very popular author at the end of the 19th century. The arrival of Marcella was discussed a lot in the London news papers. This popular novel tells about Marcella Boyce, a beauty of the 1880s, who thinks she truly believes in the values of socialism. A 21-year-old art student, she lives in a boarding house in Kensington until her father inherits Mellor Park, the family estate which is located in the Midlands. She unwillingly leaving her studies, all the things she loves and wants to do, and her friends, and starts her new life at Mellor Park, determined to help the poor people she sees around her. Then Aldous Raeburn, Tory candidate for Parliament and heir to Lord Maxwell's estate, falls in love with her. But Marcella is torn between her "love of power" and her "power to love." But she'll have to learn in the hard way that high morals are apt to clash with reality.

First Page:

MARCELLA

by

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

Author of Robert Elsmere , The History Of David Grieve , etc.

In Two Volumes

1894

[Illustration: Portrait of Mary A. Ward]

TO MY FATHER I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE

BOOK I.

"If nature put not forth her power
About the opening of the flower,
Who is it that could live an hour?"

CHAPTER I.

"The mists and the sun and the first streaks of yellow in the
beeches beautiful! beautiful !"

And with a long breath of delight Marcella Boyce threw herself on her
knees by the window she had just opened, and, propping her face upon her
hands, devoured the scene, before her with that passionate intensity of
pleasure which had been her gift and heritage through life.

She looked out upon a broad and level lawn, smoothed by the care of
centuries, flanked on either side by groups of old trees some Scotch
firs, some beeches, a cedar or two groups where the slow selective hand
of time had been at work for generations, developing here the delightful
roundness of quiet mass and shade, and there the bold caprice of bare
fir trunks and ragged branches, standing black against the sky... Continue reading book >>